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Trash litters the waters of a fishing village on Bonny Island in the Niger Delta. This impoverished region of Africa was supposed to be transformed for the better by the discovery in 1956 of large oil reserves. Half a century later, poverty still reigns, exacerbated by pollution, depleted fisheries, and environmental degradation from the oil industry.

A new study sponsored by Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.

Noting that warnings of “collapse” are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that “the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history.” Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to “precipitous collapse – often lasting centuries – have been quite common.”[…]By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.

Quote from study:

The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent.

* * *Sounds possible to me. These demographics are not sustainable. Either the brakes are put on now and quickly, or a lot of people are going to die of starvation.

The industrialized world will not be able to help because it is becoming third world itself at a steady pace. There is a limit to the number of people the earth can support.

People do not like to discuss this, but world population right now is “dysgenic.” The better educated and more intelligent all over the world are tending to have fewer children while the remainder are simply acting as if there is no problem. I saw this astonishing fact in a letter to the editor of the Financial Times (and they would not have printed it if it was the ravings of a madman):

You conclude that the future of Europe is tied to Roma, without giving compelling reasons to believe this, and omitting a key consideration: demography. Most EU citizens are not concerned with human rights abuses; flawed aid programmes are nothing new. The plight of the Roma is pressing because Roma birth rates are substantially higher than the EU average. On present estimates, about 40% of Hungary’s working age population, for example, will be Roma by 2040. Ensuring more Roma have access to education and achieve their potential – George Soros is leading the way with many valuable initiatives – is not only a question of justice, it is an economic necessity.

He is dreaming, of course, that Hungary can be a modern industrialized state with 40% gypsies. If he is right, Hungary is doomed. And woe betide us if the “future of Europe is tied to the Roma.”